Nikon D300s Video Sample

As promised in myD300sphoto samples post a few days back, I’m back with the video footage taken on that same day on the St-Laurence river.
All of the D300s movie clips are unprocessed straight out of the camera filmed in HD. I used my trusty Nikkor 80-400mm VR lens and I spent most of the time between 250-400mm with the VR on.
My first impressions are that the video quality is awesome in HD. Most of the video clips were shot at ISO 400 to get a bit more shutter speed and the noise is practically non existent. As you can tell I was hand holding the D300s all the time and I was a bit worried at first for camera shake zoomed in tight beyond 300mm but to my surprise the VR seemed to do a good job.
As expected, the auto focus is slow and poor. Sometimes I actually pre-focused before going into live view since the surfers were moving a lot. I also find the location of the auto focus button to be very odd and non-ergonomic (the AE-L button). I guess there’s a mechanical reason why it can’t be done by pressing the shutter button half way. Zooming in and out will take some practice, especially with bigger lenses.